A Buncha Cards From Night Owl, Part Two

Aloha, everybody, 

Welcome to Part Two of the (very small sampling) from the box o' cards that my pal, Sir Night Owl sent me. Let's begin...

There are only two former Dodger managers worthy of a place in my collection. Walter Alston, who's cards I rarely come across, and good ol' Tommy, who's cards show up often - thankfully. 

That's a Topps Museum Canvas Collection card. These were seeded one per box. Nice. 

I never turned on Zack Greinke like some Dodger fans did when he left LA for more money. I remembered that's why he came to LA in the first place. I accepted he's a mercenary, and I'm glad he had this scoreless innings streak while wearing LA blue. 

Topps Heritage shiny card, numbered 631/1962 

Followed by a beautiful Kenta Maeda game face RC. 

You know a buncha cards from N.O. is going to have some vintage in it. My first Scratch Off card tells me Claude was team captain. 

Here's 1960 Topps Larry Sherry. I need his brother Norm, but he's a high number (#529), so it appears Larry will be lonely for a bit. 

How about those rooftops behind Larry. Looks like this was shot in somebody's back yard. 

World Series hero Charlie Neal is my fourth Post Dodger. Time to start collecting more of these. 

Isn't that a crazy thing about our hobby? Having one or two of a set or subset is cool and all, and then someone sends you a couple more. That's great and all, but now you're at half a binder page. That's gotta be fixed, and soon you're off on another chase. Citizens would never understand it. I love it. 

Here are a few Brooklyn tribute cards. I've got a few reprints of this 1952 Topps Pee Wee Reese, but this Archives Reserve is NEW for me! 

Some cool Upper Deck issues from The Legends of New York. Of course, I now have enough of these to check and see how many more I need to complete the Brooklyn part of the set. 

Leo the Lip, The Man and Pee Wee again. 

Here's a nice framed Duke...

 Also time to check how many of these Jackie Robinson Story cards I need to complete the set...

I super dig this fold out of the Straw. Looks like a normal, semi-boring card at first...

And then, fold it out - BOOM! A very cool shot of long and lean Darryl fighting off fans to make a catch at the stands. 

Finally, the man who more or less prompted this trade...

In some comment conversation on someone's blog a while back, N.O. mentioned he had "an extra" Ron Cey autograph lying around. Well, that got my Penguin senses tingling, and I immediately let him know I could give a loving home to an extra card. 

Good ol' Night Owl dropped this baby in the box to make it complete. What a beauty...

Whew! How about that buncha scans. Pretty good, right? 

Thanks so much, Night Owl. I'll dig into my archives and find some cool Dodger Stadium things to send your way. 

Aloha! 

A Little Piece of Brooklyn Comes to my House

Aloha, everybody, 

The beauty of our hobby is there are always new folks to meet and new trades to make. That happened for me recently when I came across a card I just hadda have over at Paul's TTM Autograph Blog. 

Paul's blog was new to me, but I spotted something there from a Dodger that's very well known to any Dodgers fan. I contacted Paul, and after a couple of breif emails, the deal was done. 

Being the cool cat that Paul is, he also included a whole lotta other Dodger goodies in the trade. Check em out...

Young Trayce is tearing it up in the farms, and with the injury rate up in LA these days, Dodger fans are expecting to see him up with the big club very soon. 

I believe you all know this guy...

Here come some Dodgers from the past. Bonus: All new cards for my collection...

Milton Bradley's baseball story was brief and doomed. He had the talent, but he was a little bit, shall we say...emotionally unstable. He got a lot of fresh starts with teams that were willing to take a chance on the speedy and powerful kid, but he quickly wore out his welcome everywhere he was dumped off to, often with very public shows of anger issues. 

That said, I liked Bradley, and still occasionally wear his jersey to ball games. 

Paul dropped some Brooklyn goodness in the bunch (these aren't the big Brooklyn punch yet)...

I've now got enough of these Jackie Robinson Story cards to begin a chase to complete it...

This little extra was a great blast from the past. It's a CD baseball card. Unfortunately, I couldn't get it to run, but it's still cool to have. 

Paul also included a buncha 1978 Dodgers, helping me to chip away at the team set...

And finally, this badass slice of cardboard, the one that started the trade. The one I hadda have...

Hall of Famer? Check.
Boys of Summer? Check.
Game used? Check. 

Awesome trade with a new blogosphere friend? Checkerooni.
THANKS for the great cards, Paul. I'm looking forward to our next trade. 

Aloha! 

A PWE From Ear...Eamu...Cahoo...P-Town Tom!

Aloha, everybody, 

Good ol' P-Town Tom, he of the blog I can't pronounce, Eamus Catuli!, knows how to stuff a PWE - just fill it with Dodgers pitching. 

Check out this great card with great Japanese pitchers. I never thought I could appreciate a card with a Giant on it as much as this beauty...

 Clayton Kershaw aside, here's my favorite Dodger southpaw with an interesting photo. Poor Fernando looks like those huevos rancheros he had for breakfast are acting up...

This is more like it...

Note to envelope stuffers...a quality PWE always contains a little bitta Brooklyn...

Thanks to Tom, I now own Chase Utley's final Dodgers (flagship) card. Next year he'll probably close out his career as a Padre...

Todd Hollandsworth was one of those Rookies of the Year who never did much afterward.

At least he got a cool baseball card, and that's not a small accomplishment - just like knowing how to stuff a PWE. 

THANKS for the great cards, Tom! 

Aloha!

Breaking Down Trades of Substance

Aloha, everybody, 

A couple of weeks ago the great custom card artist, Gavin from Baseball Card Breakdown, ran a ruthless March Madness PWE tournament  in which my PWE of Padres was absolutely CRUSHED when it was put up against a Mark Hoyle PWE chock full o' vintage. It was a massacre. 

The PWE match up was all in fun, but it got me to thinking about the cards that I send out to folks. From time to time a trade will be very specific. For example, I just put together a swap of a Jim Thome Batting helmet card for a Pee Wee Reese swatch card. No surprises. Everything prearranged and set. 

Other times I'll drop a fistful of Mets or Angels or Cubs into a package and ship them off to someone who collects those teams; what we often refer to as a "blind trade". 

Both types of trades are fun, but I realized I'll have to take a bit more care in checking collectors want lists before I ship base cards out. Some collectors don't want every card from every player on the team. As I mentioned to Gavin in our conversation about this topic, "The next Jose Offerman card I get is going to be the thousandth one I don't want." 

Which leads me to the PWE that ol' Gav sent out to me, in which he led off with this gem...

The note is on the penny sleeve, so my new "O-for-man" card remained pristine. Nevertheless, I won't be submitting it for grading. It might have remained a joke between friends if that was all there was in the envelope, but Gav doesn't roll like that. In fact, there really were some cardboard gems awaiting in that PWE. 

Exhibit A. A card featuring one of my favorite all-time Dodger pitchers. The GREAT and underrated Ramon Martinez, known to most of you as Pedro's brother...

If only the Dodgers had listened to Ramon when he told them his younger brother was going to be even better than himself. *sigh*

How about this never-before-seen cardboard beauty...

 That one boasts baby-faced and moustachioed versions of the Penguin. 

Speaking of the captain...

You want more Brooklyn? I got yer Brooklyn right here...

Gavin's artfully crafted PWE spanned the Dodgers from the New York boroughs to tomorrow's heroes of Chavez Ravine...

Young Trayce just got the call up and his first ML hit when slug Franklin Gutierrez recently went on the 10-day DL. 

I'll close out the post with cards that feature the man being honored by MLB today, the patron saint of ATBATT....

The Dodgers will honor the great Jackie Robinson with the unveiling of their first stadium statue tonight, and yours truly will be there. 

I'm always happy to attend a ballgame, and extra juiced when it's Jackie Day, but I'm super thrilled to see the statue tonight, because it's featuring (as you read my prediction here first) the pose of  Jackie ....Stealing Home. 

Thanks for the great PWE Gavin! 

Aloha! 

Prizes, Trades and Gifts Are What Makes The Cardboard World Go Round

Hey everybody,

Gotta get in a post about more great cards that graced my mail lately...

First up is a thanks, (but no pics this time).  HUGE THANKS go out to Patrick, the mastermind behind The Card Hobbyist.  If you like a blog that also features cool games with da shite prizes, Patrick's place is definitely in your wheelhouse.  As a matter of fact, I'm happy to say this is the second time I won a contest over there.

But why no pics?  Two reasons:

1. I won basically the same A & G Dodger cards in a box break at Tribecards a couple of weeks ago and I've already  posted them.  Yes, they were essentially doubles, but they were also doubly great because they were 2013 Dodgers, and they contained a second Puig RC!

2. Since they were doubles, I gave the cards from Patrick right over to my son, who was stoked to have his own Puig rookie.  Thus, those particular cards were not scanned are now stashed away securely in his binder. No pics, but double thanks for the great prize, Patrick.

The next batch does have pics. These are the result of my first trade with Nate, who is kinda new on the blogs.  Nate's site is Big 44 Sports Cards.  Nate's a stone Pittsburgh collector, so that means, you best have some Pirates or Steelers for trade.  But no Penguins, Nate?  To each his own.

Heck, I don't collect hockey myself, but here's a note for all you hockey collectors out there. I would love a hockey card from one of the baddest L.A. Kings to ever wear the uni...Tiger Williams.  I grew up on Tiger in the days the Kings wore the Purple and Gold of the L.A. Forum.  Did you know Tiger holds the all-time record for most penalty minutes?  Yeah, back in those days, the Kings were doormats of the league, but Tiger wasn't one. Tiger was bad- ass personified.

So I shipped some black and gold Pirates to Nate, and he sent over some cool stuff to me...

You can never go wrong with golden sparkle Kershaw

And you can't ever go wrong with Cobb on cardboard.  Here we get a fantastic portrait of the Georgia Peach. That sly glance of Cobb's says everything, but reveals nothing.  Also, limited number.  Sweet card that I hadda have.

Finally, comes a great gift I received a while back.   A gift - unexpected and out of the blue.  This was no simple PWE.

Supercool Bert, from Swing And a Pop-Up, came through once again and sent me another fistful of cardboard from the 1987 Hy-Grade "Baseball's All-time Greats" set.  Bert has now helped me to get the chase to under 10 cards.  I can't believe it!  Just 9 cards to completion.  Check my "What I Collect" page if you have any extra Hy-Grades lying around.  You just might have those final 9.

This Hy-Grade set is very cool.  It's big limitations are the simplified green border and cardstock thinner than Topps.  But the upsides are a checklist of baseball history and royalty, and the photography is mostly great.  It features quality early color photo technology and lots of close up photography.   In addition, the players are often shown in their primes and we get more than a few legendary stadiums in the background. 

Since the Dodgers are opening a 4-game series against the ELIMINATED team from the bay, let's start off with a Dodgers/Giants face off.

 You're gonna feel like you're walking down a wing in the baseball Hall of Fame...

How's about all that cardboard?  Pretty good, thanks to my fellow collectors.